UNHCR says Malta should have provided temporary shelter

The United Nations' Refugee Agency believes Malta could have alleviated the anguish of the 13 Turkish Kurds who were at the centre of a two-week asylum row by allowing them to land and later deporting them to Italy.

As they first attempted to make their way to Italy, the 13 stowaways were in such an appalling state that they were forced to drink their own urine, UNHCR spokeswoman Laura Boldrini told The Times yesterday.

The 11 men and two boys aged 13 and 15 had tried to enter Italy hidden in a German container ship, the Lydia Oldendorff. They were found on October 9 in the port of Gioia Tauro but were forced back on board .

They were then stranded in the cramped boat in international waters some 15 miles off Malta for days after the Maltese government also refused them permission to land.

The two-week standoff at sea came to an end on Saturday after Italy agreed to take in the illegal immigrants.

The Maltese government had insisted that under the Dublin II Convention, Italy had to assume responsibility for the people on board, since the boat berthed first in Italian internal waters.

But Ms Boldrini, who joined the immigrants on board last Saturday, argued that Malta should have allowed the immigrants to land even though Italy was legally obliged to do so in the first place.

"It was a desperate situation. Malta should have accepted them, given them protection and then deported them to Italy. There would have been no complications, nothing illegal about that."

When the ship first docked in Italy, the 13 men were in a sorry state, after being cooped up in a container and with water supplies exhausted, Ms Boldrini said.

According to Stefan von der Heiden, a spokesman for the shipping line MarConsult Schiffahrt, it took the port workers some two and a half hours to realise that there were stowaways in the container.

After providing food, the Italian police allegedly put the group back on the container ship after threatening the ship captain with arrest if he did not take them back.

"The Italian authorities used harsh methods to put them back on the vessel and some of them were injured in the process. They were treated like garbage," Mr von der Heiden told The Times.

Ms Boldrini said the Italian authorities failed to provide any interpreters and could not understand the Turkish Kurds' requests for asylum.

"Returning an asylum seeker to his country of origin without hearing his or her claim is against the fundamental principles of international refugee law," she said.

The UNHCR is already at loggerheads with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi over the mass expulsion earlier this month of around 2,000 illegal immigrants housed in a reception centre on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The situation on board nearly spiralled out of control, and a number threatened to commit suicide if the ship proceeded back to Turkey.

"The crew had no choice but to put the 13 men in a room normally reserved for one to two people," Mr von der Heiden said.

The ship's owners agreed to delay its scheduled journey at the cost of heavy penalties in the hope that the impasse would be quickly resolved.

The Italian government resisted the repeated calls by the UNHCR to accept the Turkish Kurds, but had a change of heart last Saturday.

Ms Boldrini was in fact the one to relay the good news to the immigrants.

"They were weak, psychologically traumatised, and very emotional, especially the two boys. You could see the tension leave their faces."

The men are currently in detention but the Italian authorities have agreed to transfer them to an open centre on Thursday.